Could you imagine owning a PS2 and never having played Shadow of the Colossus? Or a GTA: Vice City? Ha ha. That'd be dumb. Well, if you have a PS3—if you're moving into the PS4 era—without having played Puppeteer, you've made a big mistake that you need to fix posthaste.

Puppeteer is (mostly) a sidescroller. It came out late last year. You can play it solo or co-op. I don't think many people bought it. And, truth be told, it's not perfect. It's got a bit too much talking and has some odd difficulty spikes.

But!

Just look, will you? Here's a smattering of late-game action that will not at all ruin your ability to love this game:

Puppeteer is beautiful, constantly. It boasts a fine new gameplay idea: the hero propelling himself through parts of the game world using giant scissors to cut through parts of the landscape (or his enemies) that are made of cloth. The whole game is presented as a play, complete with its "actors" breaking the fourth wall to address the audience. It is smart, funny, well-written.

See?

It's wonderful.

Puppeteer came out right as the world was going on and on about Grand Theft Auto V. Hell, that's why I'm telling you about it again now. I was loving the game last September and that got pulled away by GTA V and other bigger games and then those new consoles. It's a damn shame. But, just yesterday, I went back and finished Puppeteer, capturing the footage you can see in this post.

My god, this game is amazing. Its visuals are great, but even that didn't help Puppeteer last fall. It's too bad, but so it goes. In years of new console hardware, everyone gets distracted talking about next-gen graphics while ignoring the artistry of an old-gen masterpiece. (In that respect, the game is very similar to another artistically incredible "old-tech" sidescroller, the magnificent Kirby's Epic Yarn).

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Find a copy. Play it. It's $30-40! Here's an Amazon link, if that helps — full disclosure, our parent company makes a cut if you buy it there. Or buy it through GameStop. Or Wal-Mart. Wherever. It doesn't matter. I mean, you can just download it right now right to your PS3. I highly doubt you'll be disappointed.